Camel JMX

Apache Camel has extensive support for JMX to allow you to monitor and control the Camel managed objects with a JMX client.
Camel also provides a JMX component that allows you to subscribe to MBean notifications. This page is about how to manage and monitor Camel using JMX.

Activating JMX in Camel

Spring JAR dependency, required for Camel 2.8 or older

spring-context.jar, spring-aop.jar, spring-beans.jar, and spring-core.jar are needed on the classpath by Camel to be able to use JMX instrumentation. If these .jars are not on the classpath, Camel will fallback to non JMX mode. This situation is logged at WARN level using logger name org.apache.camel.impl.DefaultCamelContext.

From Camel 2.9 onwards, the Spring JARs are no longer required to run Camel in JMX mode.

Using JMX to manage Apache Camel

By default, JMX instrumentation agent is enabled in Camel, which means that Camel runtime creates and registers MBean management objects with a MBeanServer instance in the VM. This allows Camel users to instantly obtain insights into how Camel routes perform down to the individual processor level.

The supported types of management objects are endpoint, route, service, and processor. Some of these management objects also expose lifecycle operations in addition to performance counter attributes.

The DefaultManagementNamingStrategy is the default naming strategy which builds object names used for MBean registration. By default, org.apache.camel is the domain name for all object names created by CamelNamingStrategy. The domain name of the MBean object can be configured by Java VM system property:

-Dorg.apache.camel.jmx.mbeanObjectDomainName=your.domain.name

Or, by adding a jmxAgent element inside the camelContext element in Spring configuration:

Or in Camel 2.1 its a bit easier (not having to use JVM system property) if using pure Java as you can disable it as follows:

CamelContext camel = new DefaultCamelContext();
camel.disableJMX();

Locating a MBeanServer in the Java VM

Each CamelContext can have an instance of InstrumentationAgent wrapped inside the InstrumentationLifecycleStrategy. The InstrumentationAgent is the object that interfaces with a MBeanServer to register/unregister Camel MBeans. Multiple CamelContexts/InstrumentationAgents can/should share a MBeanServer. By default, Camel runtime picks the first MBeanServer returned by MBeanServerFactory.findMBeanServer method that matches the default domain name of org.apache.camel. You may want to change the default domain name to match the MBeanServer instance that you are already using in your application. Especially, if your MBeanServer is attached to a JMX connector server, you will not need to create a connector server in Camel.

You can configure the matching default domain name via system property.

-Dorg.apache.camel.jmx.mbeanServerDefaultDomain=<your.domain.name>

Or, by adding a jmxAgent element inside the camelContext element in Spring configuration:

If no matching MBeanServer can be found, a new one is created and the new MBeanServer's default domain name is set according to the default and configuration as mentioned above.

It is also possible to use the PlatformMBeanServer when it is desirable to manage JVM MBeans by setting the system property. The MBeanServer default domain name configuration is ignored as it is not applicable. Starting in next release (1.5), the default value of usePlatformMBeanServer will be changed to "True". You can set the property to "False" to disable using platform MBean server.

-Dorg.apache.camel.jmx.usePlatformMBeanServer=True

Or, by adding a jmxAgent element inside the camelContext element in Spring configuration:

Creating JMX RMI Connector Server

JMX connector server enables MBeans to be remotely managed by a JMX client such as JConsole; Camel JMX RMI connector server can be optionally turned on by setting system property and the MBeanServer used by Camel is attached to that connector server.

-Dorg.apache.camel.jmx.createRmiConnector=True

Or, by adding a jmxAgent element inside the camelContext element in Spring configuration:

By default, RMI server object listens on a dynamically generated port, which can be a problem for connections established through a firewall. In such situations, RMI connection port can be explicitly set by the system property.

-Dorg.apache.camel.jmx.rmiConnector.connectorPort=<port number>

Or, by adding a jmxAgent element inside the camelContext element in Spring configuration:

For example you can enable remote JMX connections to the Sun JMX connector, via setting the following environment variable (using set or export depending on your platform). These settings only configure the Sun JMX connector within Java 1.5+, not the JMX connector that Camel creates by default.

(The SUNJMX environment variable is simple used by the startup script for Camel, as additional startup parameters for the JVM. If you start Camel directly, you'll have to pass these parameters yourself.)

jmxAgent Properties Reference

Spring property

System property

Default Value

Description

id

The JMX agent name, and it is not optional

usePlatformMBeanServer

org.apache.camel.jmx.usePlatformMBeanServer

false, true - Release 1.5 or later

If true, it will use the MBean server from the JVM

mbeanServerDefaultDomain

org.apache.camel.jmx.mbeanServerDefaultDomain

org.apache.camel

The default JMX domain of the MBeanServer

mbeanObjectDomainName

org.apache.camel.jmx.mbeanObjectDomainName

org.apache.camel

The JMX domain that all object names will use

createConnector

org.apache.camel.jmx.createRmiConnect

false

If we should create a JMX connector (to allow remote management) for the MBeanServer

registryPort

org.apache.camel.jmx.rmiConnector.registryPort

1099

The port that the JMX RMI registry will use

connectorPort

org.apache.camel.jmx.rmiConnector.connectorPort

-1 (dynamic)

The port that the JMX RMI server will use

serviceUrlPath

org.apache.camel.jmx.serviceUrlPath

/jmxrmi/camel

The path that JMX connector will be registered under

onlyRegisterProcessorWithCustomId

org.apache.camel.jmx.onlyRegisterProcessorWithCustomId

false

Camel 2.0: If this option is enabled then only processors with a custom id set will be registered. This allows you to filer out unwanted processors in the JMX console.

statisticsLevel

All

Camel 2.1: Configures the level for whether performance statistics is enabled for the mbean. See section Configuring level of granularity for performance statistics for more details.

Configuring whether to register mbeans always, for new routes or just by default

Available as of Camel 2.7

Camel now offers 2 settings to control whether or not to register mbeans

Option

Default

Description

registerAlways

false

If enabled then mbeans is always registered.

registerNewRoutes

true

If enabled then adding new routes after CamelContext has been started will also register mbeans from that given route.

By default Camel registers mbeans for all the routes configured when its starting. The registerNewRoutes option control if mbeans should also be registered if you add new routes thereafter. You can disable this, if you for example add and remove temporary routes where management is not needed.

Be a bit caution to use the registerAlways option when using dynamic EIP patterns such as the Recipient List having unique endpoints. If so then each unique endpoint and its associated services/producers would also be registered. This could potential lead to system degration due the rising number of mbeans in the registry. A MBean is not a light-weight object and thus consume memory.

Monitoring Camel using JMX

Using JConsole to monitor Camel

The CamelContext should appear in the list of local connections, if you are running JConsole on the same host as Camel.

To connect to a remote Camel instance, or if the local process does not show up, use Remote Process option, and enter an URL. Here is an example localhost URL:service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://localhost:1099/jmxrmi/camel

Using the Apache Camel which Jconsole

Which endpoints are registered

In Camel 2.1 onwards onlysingleton endpoints are registered as the overhead for non singleton will be substantial in cases where thousands or millions of endpoints are used. This can happens when using a Recipient List EIP or from a ProducerTemplate that sends a lot of messages.

Which processors are registered

How to use the JMX NotificationListener to listen the camel events?

The Camel notification events give a coarse grained overview what is happening. You can see lifecycle event from context and endpoints and you can see exchanges being received by and sent to endpoints.

From Camel 2.4 you can use a custom JMX NotificationListener to listen the camel events.
First you need to set up a JmxNotificationEventNotifier before you start the CamelContext.

Using the Tracer mbean to get fine grained tracing

Additionally to the coarse grained notifications above Camel 2.9.0 support JMX Notification for fine grained trace events.
These can be found in the Tracer mbean. To activate fine grained tracing you first need to activate tracing on the context or on a route.
This can either be done when configuring the context or on the context / route mbeans.

As a second step you have to set the jmxTraceNotifications attribute to true on the tracer. This can again be done when configuring the context or at runtime on the tracer mbean.

Now you can register for TraceEvent Notifications on the Tracer MBean using JConsole. There will be one Notification for every step on the route with all exchange and message details.

Using JMX for your own Camel Code

Registering your own Managed Endpoints

Available as of Camel 2.0
You can decorate your own endpoints with spring managed annotations @ManagedResource to allow to register them in the Camel mbean server and thus access your custom mbeans using JMX.Notice: in Camel 2.1 we have changed this to apply other than just endpoints but then you need to implement the interface org.apache.camel.spi.ManagementAware as well. More about this later.

For example we have the following custom endpoint where we define some options to be managed:

Notice from Camel 2.9 onwards its encouraged to use the @ManagedResource, @ManagedAttribute, and @ManagedOperation from the org.apache.camel.api.management package. This allows your custom code to not depend on Spring JARs.

Programming your own Managed Services

Available as of Camel 2.1

Camel now offers to use your own mbeans when registering services for management. What that means is for example you can develop a custom Camel component and have it expose mbeans for endpoints, consumers and producers etc. All you need to do is to implement the interface org.apache.camel.spi.ManagementAware and return the managed object Camel should use.

Now before you think oh boys the JMX API is really painful and terrible, then yeah you are right. Lucky for us Spring though too and they created a range of annotations you can use to export management on an existing bean. That means that you often use that and just return this in the getManagedObject from the ManagementAware interface. For an example see the code example above with the CustomEndpoint.

Now in Camel 2.1 you can do this for all the objects that Camel registers for management which are quite a bunch, but not all.

For services which do not implement this ManagementAware interface then Camel will fallback to using default wrappers as defined in the table below:

Type

MBean wrapper

CamelContext

ManagedCamelContext

Component

ManagedComponent

Endpoint

ManagedEndpoint

Consumer

ManagedConsumer

Producer

ManagedProducer

Route

ManagedRoute

Processor

ManagedProcessor

Tracer

ManagedTracer

Service

ManagedService

In addition to that there are some extended wrappers for specialized types such as

Type

MBean wrapper

ScheduledPollConsumer

ManagedScheduledPollConsumer

BrowsableEndpoint

ManagedBrowseableEndpoint

Throttler

ManagedThrottler

Delayer

ManagedDelayer

SendProcessor

ManagedSendProcessor

And in the future we will add additional wrappers for more EIP patterns.

ManagementNamingStrategy

Available as of Camel 2.1

Camel provides a pluggable API for naming strategy by org.apache.camel.spi.ManagementNamingStrategy. A default implementation is used to compute the mbean names that all mbeans are registered with.

Management naming pattern

Available as of Camel 2.10

From Camel 2.10 onwards we made it easier to configure a naming pattern for the mbeans. The pattern is used as part of the ObjectName as they key after the domain name.

By default Camel will use MBean names for the ManagedCamelContextMBean as follows:

org.apache.camel:context=localhost/camel-1,type=context,name=camel-1

If you configure a name on the CamelContext then that name is part of the ObjectName as well. For example if we have

<camelContext id="myCamel" ...>

Then the MBean names will be as follows:

org.apache.camel:context=localhost/myCamel,type=context,name=myCamel

Now if there is a naming clash in the JVM, such as there already exists a MBean with that given name above, then Camel will by default try to auto correct this by finding a new free name in the JMXMBeanServer by using a counter. As shown below the counter is now appended, so we have myCamel-1 as part of the ObjectName:

This is possible because Camel uses a naming pattern by default that supports the following tokens

#camelId# = the CamelContext id (eg the name)

#name# - same as #camelId#

#counter# - an incrementing counter

#bundleId# - the OSGi bundle id (only for OSGi environments)

#symbolicName# - the OSGi symbolic name (only for OSGi environments)

#version# - the OSGi bundle version (only for OSGi environments)

The default naming pattern is differentiated between OSGi and non-OSGi as follows:

non OSGI: #name#

OSGi: #bundleId#-#name#

However if there is a naming clash in the JMXMBeanServer then Camel will automatic fallback and use the #counter# in the pattern to remedy this. And thus the following patterns will then be used:

non OSGI: #name#-#counter#

OSGi: #bundleId#-#name#-#counter#

If you set an explicit naming pattern, then that pattern is always used, and the default patterns above is not used.
This allows us to have full control, very easily, of the naming for both the CamelContext id in the Registry as well the JMX mbeans in the JMXMBeanRegistry.

So if we want to explicit name both the CamelContext and to use fixed mbean names, that do not change (eg has no counters), then we can use the new managementNamePattern attribute:

<camelContext id="myCamel" managementNamePattern="#name#">

Then the MBean names will always be as follows:

org.apache.camel:context=localhost/myCamel,type=context,name=myCamel

In Java, you can configure the managementNamePattern as follows:

context.getManagementNameStrategy().setNamePattern("#name#");

You can also use a different name in the managementNamePattern than the id, so for example we can do:

<camelContext id="myCamel" managementNamePattern="coolCamel">

You may want to do this in OSGi environments in case you do not want the OSGi bundle id as part of the mbean names. As the OSGi bundle id can change if you restart the server, or uninstall and install the same application. You can then do as follows to not use the OSGi bundle id as part of the name:

<camelContext id="myCamel" managementNamePattern="#name#">

Note this requires that myCamel is unique in the entire JVM. If you install a 2nd Camel application that has the same CamelContext id and managementNamePattern then Camel will fail upon starting, and report a MBean already exists exception.

ManagementStrategy

Available as of Camel 2.1

Camel now provides a totally pluggable management strategy that allows you to be 100% in control of management. It is a rich interface with many methods for management. Not only for adding and removing managed objects from the mbean server, but also event notification is provided as well using the org.apache.camel.spi.EventNotifier API. What it does, for example, is make it easier to provide an adapter for other management products. In addition, it also allows you to provide more details and features that are provided out of the box at Apache.

Configuring level of granularity for performance statistics

Available as of Camel 2.1

You can now set a pre set level whether performance statistics is enabled or not when Camel start ups. The levels are

Alldefault - Camel will enable statistics for both routes and processors (fine grained)

From Camel 2.9 onwards the performance statistics also include average load statistics per CamelContext and Route mbeans. The statistics is average load based on the number of in-flight exchanges, on a per 1, 5, and 15 minute rate. This is similar to load statistics on Unix systems. Camel 2.11 onwards allows you to explicit disable load performance statistics by setting loadStatisticsEnabled=false on the <jmxAgent>. Note that it will be off if the statics level is configured to off as well.

At runtime you can always use the management console (such as jconsole) to change on a given route or processor whether its statistics are enabled or not.

What does statistics enabled mean?

Statistics enabled means that Camel will do fine grained performance statistics for that particular mbean. The statistics you can see are many, such as: number of exchanges completed/failed, last/total/mina/max/mean processing time, first/last failed time, etc.

Hiding sensitive information

Available as of Camel 2.12

By default Camel enlist MBeans in JMX such as endpoints configured using URIs. In these configuration there may be sensitive information such as passwords.
These information can be hidden by enabling the sanitize option as shown below: